>>>>>>>My theory is that before long all newspapers will be the same size: the size of your computer screen. Or your e-Reader device, or your Palm, or your iPod, or your smart phone, or whatever -- your portable gizmo with connectivity. I have been having this debate with my best friend, who is a well known Tribune writer, for about five years now. He thinks I'm a technology crackhead. I think he is in denial. I can't wait to tell him how wrong he was [g].
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>>>>>>I sure hope you're wrong. There's something truly pleasurable about sitting down at breakfast and opening the morning paper, propping it up to read and the like. The thought of trying to read it on a tiny screen is horrifying.
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>>>>>Luddite! LOL
>>>>>
>>>>>But seriously, the device won't necessarily be small. I am sure small devices like cell phones will be used by some as e-Readers (as indeed they are now), but that would only be for those to whom compactness is essential. What I picture is something about the size of a magazine page. Given ongoing improvements in pixel resolution and the upcoming no-glare screens, they will be at least as readable as a magazine. All you will be giving up will be the ability to open up a paper newspaper to a size of 2.5 feet by 2.5 feet. Is that really a feature? Think about it.
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>>>>One of the things I like about reading a newspaper as opposed to reading the news online is that I encounter things I wouldn't necessarily read online. I scan the whole paper (part at breakfast, part at lunch), stopping to read what catches my interest. I may read a paragraph of one article, a photo caption from another, all of a third. I just don't see an e-reading format lending itself to that kind of reading, at least not anytime soon.
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>>>Tamar,
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>>>What makes you think those things would no longer be available to you? An e-universe (sorry for the clunky invented word) will contain more information, not less.
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>>>I am not pissing on you. You have been one of my favorite FoxPeople (can't say FoxFolk, Norm patented that, LOL) for longer than the UT has existed. We just see e-Readers differently, I guess.
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>>Hi Mike,
>>Well no matter what the e-universe ends up offering, I use the dictionary as a parallel to TamarG's newspaper...
>>When I grab my dictionary I have a little contest with myself to see how close I can get to the word just by feel (without even looking at the book itself).
>>1 in 1000 I'm dead on but probably 8 out of 10 I'm reasonably close (a few pages off - 10 or less).
>>Then starts my search for the actual word. First I check to rationalize why I landed where I did. Then I look at the "index words", and often I say to myself 'oh yea, I was going to lookup xxxxx a few days back and it's close by so I'll do it now". Or I'll see a word in my peripheral vision on the page that catches my eye so I read its definition.
>>Finally, on to the word I wanted originally. When I find it I can see, without further 'action', words that may be closely related or words that are also worth a gander. So I have a looksee at them too.
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>>I'd lose all this good stuff with an electronic "dictionary", purposefully put in quotes because it shouldn't really be called the same thing when it can't do (for me and lots of people I'm sure) what a dictionary can do.
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>An online dictionary can do everything a paper dictionary can do, and more. That is self-evident. The only thing any of us will miss, me included, is the smell of paper and ink. Well, tough muffins, as a friend of mine likes to say. (Ironically, she is in the book distribution business).

So how does it do what I described? That an on-line dictionary can do everything a paper dictionary can do may be self-evident to you, but it certainly isn't to me. The same was said about e-books, but the market seems to suggest otherwise.
Robots can do many things that humans can do, but humans still do them, in most cases, better and faster. But humans can't do so 24 hours a day and humans expect pay for work.
I doubt that an on-line dictionary can do everything a paper dictionary can do, but I would agree that it can do enough such that they will replace paper dictionaries. Sadly.
I guess my sense of smell must be bad because I don't get a whiff of anything from mine < s >